A reckless friend defines the borders of Europe by its green
beans. A true European, he argues, would never serve a squeaky
bean, and woe betide anyone who leaves them crunchy. Australian
chefs, he continues, are so fearful of overcooked vegetables that
they invariably err way too far on the under side. The line is
fine, but at the Continental, true to the name, they're all about
the properly cooked veg, à point all the way, whether it's
asparagus, peas, peppers or zucchini. It's not your everyday
rallying cry, but you have to admit it has a certain charm.

Vegetables are by no means the main game here. "DELI • BAR •
BISTRO" reads the business card, and that's roughly the order of
priorities. By his own admission, chef and co-owner Elvis
Abrahanowicz has been obsessed with delicatessens and tinned fish
since he was a sprat, and at the Continental he makes a fetish of
both. The upper floor of the terrace, tucked on Australia Street
handily between the Courthouse Hotel and Newtown police station, is
a two-room bistro, while the ground floor serves as bar and deli
both. If you like cold cuts with a coldie, things are looking
up.

Ten years ago at Bodega, Abrahanowicz, his fellow chef and
co-owner Ben Milgate, sommelier and partner Joe Valore, and style
goddess and hostess Sarah Doyle turned the moribund tapas-bar
concept on its head. They created a thoroughly Surry Hills-styled
eatery that pulled together bold graphics, an eclectic menu,
Bohemian-style etched mirrors and rollicking tunes in a somehow
seamless package that became a magnet for the neighbourhood's cool
kids, food fans and cool-kid food fans. At Porteño they doubled
down on size and the Latin side of Abrahanowicz's
Polish-Argentinian heritage, opening an asado that was utterly
worthy of the Buenos Aires demonym, and yet not quite like anything
you'd ever be lucky enough to find in Argentina. Against all the
odds, too, they found a way to make it even louder than their first
place.

Since then, the chef has become a husband and father, and at the
Continental it's definitely less "Elvis" and more "Abrahanowicz".
He still sports metal teeth and roughly as much ink as any four
convicted felons you can name put together, and you don't have to
look far around the room for liberty rolls, pin-up bangs and
well-oiled quiffs - this is Newtown, after all - but everything
feels a bit more grown-up nonetheless.

And that goes double for the bistro. "This is like eating at
Yiayia's place," said a companion as we settled into the
insistently green dining room upstairs. "Or at Nonna's," said
another. It's a feeling intensified by the first dinner sitting
starting at six (the second is at 8.30). But Nan probably doesn't
hang her walls with large framed drawings of pickle jars and
lobsters, and unless she's a particularly hip nan, is unlikely to
decorate with baskets crammed with pineapples.

There are moments when the menu leans a bit blue-rinse, too. When
was the last time you saw chicken breast listed on a menu by a
leading chef?

But Abrahanowicz roasts it (no sous-vide here) and puts it on the
plate with confit chicken leg, braised celery in a whopping length,
little onions and a sauce made with chardonnay, the menu proclaims,
from Walsh & Sons in Margaret River.

Ben Milgate, Abrahanowicz's long-term kitchen companion and
brother-from-another-mother, isn't involved with this venture;
instead, Canadian chef Jesse Warkentin shares duties at the stoves.
The Continental's bistro presents a different palate - somehow with
not so much bass and treble. The accents of intense acid and spice
that typify the cooking at Bodega are largely absent and, despite
the presence of plenty of cheese, charcuterie and cured stuff in
the deli, the food has little of the smoky, fatty, salty vibe of
Porteño (though it is reminiscent at times of some of the dishes
the team threw down at Popteño, their Rushcutters Bay pop-up, last
summer).

It's certainly rich. A showering of Parmigiano-Reggiano shavings
is the unusual twist on an otherwise tame and correct beef tartare
ringed by gaufrette potatoes (aka the chips with the crisscross
pattern), while fat rounds cut from a log of goat's cheese top a
tall Tatin of roasted shallots. The boldest of the entrées is a
pair of large ravioli swimming in a cream sauce sharpened with
prosecco and tarragon. The mixture of prawn and lamb's brains that
fills them is quite probably going to scare off more than a few
diners, but the brains give the stuffing a lightness and bounce
that really make it sing.

Surprisingly few elements of the deli are brought upstairs. They
do a bit of canning in-house downstairs, and tinned peas, with that
luscious not-quite-mealy texture, make an apt cameo on a plate
piled with unfrenched cutlets topped with yoghurt-dressed purslane
and a handsomely large anchovy fillet.

(Try not to think too hard about the environmental ethics of
canning peas in your restaurant only to open them up again for one
of your main courses.)

Long-cooked veg is given a starring role stuffed, yemista-style,
with aromatic rice. Far from the usual dreary watery flip-off to
vegetarians, this version is distinguished by the concentrated
flavours of the tomato, pepper and zucchini and the way they and
the short-grain rice are cooked just a shade shy of too much.

Baked Vacherin with smoked sausage and olives.

Zucchini comes out on top again, figuratively speaking, with its
nightshade buddies in the rough-cut ratatouille that underpins the
fish of the day: yellowbelly flounder, the pristine steamed fillets
stacked pearly and full of juice under a wodge of taramasalata. It
might be the dish of the night. It's the little details, like the
way the taramasalata (replete with scalloped edges) is separated
from the fish by a sliver of croûton, that's typical of the
undersell, overdeliver ethos that sets Abrahanowicz and his crew
apart from the crowd. The look upstairs hasn't quite gelled yet,
and some aspects of its concept and decoration border on the
precious, but you don't have to look too hard to see these guys
aren't just doing retro for retro's sake. The direction and
decisions have come from the gut as much as the brain.

Dessert. Is overproof Bundaberg the best choice of rum to pour
over a big baba? Probably not, but it surely is flammable. Will the
bubbly, uneven finish on the sides of crème caramel prompt narrowed
eyes from obsessive pastry types? No doubt, but the diced fig
accompaniment is a nice idea.

I'm more sold on the sides. Asparagus, topped mimosa-style with
sieved boiled egg and resting in a little butter sauce, is a
masterclass in how vegetables ought to be cooked - a worthy entrée
in itself. The boulangère, a very well-browned cross-section of
potato strata, is flat-out brilliant. (Not to bang on about the
prices, but when the sides are $14 each, they damn well should be a
hit; nothing about Continental is cheap.)

Service is abundant and well-meaning in the bistro, though they're
yet to master the dark art of fitting all the food on the tiny
marble-topped tables with finesse. (The key thing is firmly
believing it can be done, whatever else the rules of physics may
insist.) Despite the awkward feel to the rooms, there's nothing
inherently wrong with upstairs - after all, what's more likeable
than the idea of a few tables above a deli where you can get the
good stuff? The challenge is getting there. Downstairs is just too
much fun.

It's okay as a day place - even if they don't do coffee and the
sandwiches are slathered with a bit too much butter, oil and fat
for me to say I truly love them - but as a deli you can drink in,
or a bar with a radically overdeveloped commitment to quality
snacks, it's one of the best and most fun openings of the
season.

Much credit must go to Sarah Doyle here. She's famously exacting
when it comes to details and finishes, and Continental abounds in
beautiful touches, whether it's the careful curation (for once that
loathsome word might actually be justified) of the
all-killer-no-filler cans and jars for sale on the shelves, the
heavy brass pigs holding down the business cards by the till or the
dark timber joinery on the refrigerators. Barman Mikey Nicolian,
late of Gardel's Bar, and co-owner/wine fella Joe Valore work the
floor with gusto, Nicolian popping the lid on canned Martinis and
showing around the sardine tray (like a cigarette girl, only taller
and fishier), Valore stepping away from his Latin specialisation to
pour wines from Australia, Italy and France as well as stuff with
tildes in the name.

The eats are gutsier down here, whether you're talking the plate
of house-cured fish (big, fat mussels, lush Tommy ruff, sublimely
textured hunks of octopus tentacle), or the salumi, often cut thick
in the French style. Then there's the barbecue-stopper: a Vacherin
baked whole in its little spruce box. It takes a hard heart (or at
least some hardened arteries) to resist molten brie accessorised
with green olives and rounds of smoked Polish sausage on
toothpicks.

Garnishes of pickled peppers and fancy potato chips also abound.
Nothing beats the treatment for the razor clams, though. The can of
Conservas de Cambados comes not only with fancy crisps and green
olives spliced with slivers of lemon, but tiny stemmed glasses of
the clams' canning liquor on ice with dry sherry and a dash of
Lillet Blanc.

A good deli is hard to find. A good deli that does outlandish,
tasty and exciting things with tinned fish and gin is a revelation.
Once a familiar part of the urban landscape, the deli is a dying
breed, But if the butchery can reinvent itself as a hip, new
desirable thing, so too can the delicatessen - at least if Elvis
Abrahanowicz has anything to say about it.

Each fortnight we round up the most interesting characters from the food world for your listening pleasure. We chat to chefs, cooks, authors, bar tenders and baristas - anyone who has something new and interesting to say about the way we like to eat and drink.